John Aldridge explains the magnitude of Liverpool's clash with West Brom

Former Liverpool striker John Aldridge has said that Sunday's Premier League clash with West Bromwich Albion is huge for the side as they look to get things back on track following their defeat to Newcastle United.

Before that Liverpool face a trip to Sion in the Europa League as they aim to finish top of Group B - they only need a draw to do so - but Aldridge feels their focus needs to be on the domestic front as he doesn't really see an advantage either way in finishing first or second in their group.

Liverpool are now nine points off the pace in the race for the title and are currently sitting in eighth place in what is a tight league after 15 games so far this season. It does seem that a good run of results can place a side handily going into the second half of the season.

The Reds are also six points off the top four, and that is not a gap they will want to be extended between now and the conclusion of the calendar year.

With Sunday's game in mind, Aldridge would like manager Jurgen Klopp to hold back the bulk of his first team players, and play those in Switzerland who are either in need of the game time, or the experience.

"Jurgen Klopp should use the game to get some more experience into players like Connor Randall and Jordan Rossiter while basically anyone who’s not going to start in Sunday’s midfield should play.

"We’ve got two players for every position now and we’ve still got players who need games – the likes of Jordan Henderson and [Christian] Benteke need game time."

This week is certainly an opportunity for Klopp to freshen things up, but he will also want his side to grab back any momentum that was lost in the North East on Saturday as quickly as possible, but one feels that even if Klopp made a lot of changes to the side for the trip to Switzerland, his side would still have enough about them to win the game before they turn their attentions to Tony Pulis and his immovable object of a defence that he's likely to set up with.

Ian Bolland

A journalism graduate of Liverpool John Moores University. During his time at university, Ian spent time on work experience at local newspapers in Liverpool, Bolton and Wigan, and prior to that he did work for The Observer's 'fans verdict'. Ian also has interests in news, current affairs and business but mostly sport, including football, rugby league, cricket, golf and Formula 1, amongst others.